Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Goldminers hold Canvastown reunion
Old residents recall the early days of goldmining at Canvastown at a reunion 110 years ago, as we take a flick through the archives. From the Marlborough Express, April 7, 1914:
An interesting gathering took place at Canvastown on Saturday last, when about twenty old residents of the district and miners from the Wakamarina met at Satherley’s Hotel, Canvastown, to commemorate the discovery of gold on the Wakamarina exactly 50 years back by Messrs G. Rutland, H. Harris, and the late John Wilson.
Mr W.H. Smith, who arrived at Havelock scarcely two months after the discovery, was voted to the chair.
After a good spread had been done ample justice to the chairman proposed the toast of the King, and when tlus had been drunk explained the object of the gathering, which Mr James Hughes, of Pelorus Valley, had been mainly instrumental in bringing about.
The discovery of gold had been a material factor in the development of the district by bringing population into it. He could remember Havelock when it was all fern, flax, and tutu, and the buildings were all of the mushroom type— run up in a hurry; whilst at the present time it only required a drainage system installed
to make it as up-to-date as any small town in the Dominion.
A telephone message from Mr C. Diamanti was here handed in, in which he explained that as he was an inmate of the cottage hospital he was unable to attend, much to his regret.
Mr Joshua Rutland was then called upon to give an account of the discovery of gold in the Wakamarina, but, at his request, was excused, and Mr George Rutland, the leading spirit in the discovery, gave a very interesting description of what led up to the discovery, from the accidental finding of a small speck of gold in the bed of the river by the late Mrs George Pope whilst washing clothes, up to the time when he and his party
obtained about 18ozs of gold in a day and a-half, and the only scales they had on which to weigh it was the ones used by his mother to weigh the butter.
The chairman then proposed the health of Mr Rutland, which was drunk with musical honours. After Mr Rutland had replied, in response to a call from the chairman a song was given by Mr Morris, which received a well merited encore and had to be followed with a second.
Mr James Hughes, the convener of the meeting, spoke at some length on the causes that had given the Wakamarina a set-back and had emptied it of its bone and sinew at a critical period of its history, one of the principal of which was the rush to Hokitika.